Rate My Professor Ruth Dukes

Professor Ruth Dukes is Professor of Labour Law in the School of Law at the University of Glasgow. She joined the University in 2005, following her graduation from the University of Edinburgh, the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the London School of Economics. Her research specializations encompass labour law, with a particular emphasis on collective labour law, theories and systems of worker representation, trade union law, employee information and consultation, and labour history across Britain, Germany, and Europe. She is renowned for her scholarship on the foundational scholars of labour law, including Hugo Sinzheimer, Otto Kahn-Freund, and Lord Wedderburn.

Professor Dukes has secured major research funding, serving as Principal Investigator for the European Research Council Advanced Grant project The Rule of Law at Work: Employment Law Enforcement and Compliance (2025, €2.44 million) and the ERC Starting Grant Work on Demand: Contracting for Work in a Changing Economy (2018–2023, €1.42 million). She also held an AHRC Early Career Fellowship in 2011/12, leading to her book The Labour Constitution: The Enduring Idea of Labour Law (Oxford University Press, 2014), which was runner-up for the SLSA Socio-Legal Theory and History Prize in 2016. Other key publications include Democracy at Work: Contract, Status and Post-Industrial Justice (Polity Press, 2022, with Wolfgang Streeck) and articles such as "The economic sociology of labour law" (Journal of Law and Society, 2019). Among her honours are Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, emeritus member of the Young Academy of Scotland, and visiting professorships including Innis Christie Professor at Dalhousie University (2022). She holds leadership roles as Vice President of the Institute of Employment Rights (since 2024), member of the Labour Law Research Network Steering Committee, ADAPT International Scientific Committee, Jimmy Reid Foundation Project Board, and Editorial Board of the Spanish Labour and Employment Relations Journal. Professor Dukes has delivered prestigious lectures, including the Hugo Sinzheimer Lecture in Frankfurt and plenaries at international conferences.